Snowden Brushed Aside

Snowden Brushed Aside

A stocky little tycoon who smiles and smiles (from habit rather than chronic mirth) is great Baron Melchett, No. 1 British industrialist, board chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd. Last week in Manhattan he smiled at the Bond Club, addressed to its spruce and serious members a sardonic prophecy. Within two years, he declared, the British Empire will have scrapped her historic free trade policy, girt herself with a tariff wall against U. S. and even European competition.

But what about Philip Snowden, the "Iron Chancellor" of British Labor, whom everyone knows to be a lifelong, well-nigh fanatical champion of free trade? The boldest part of Lord Melchett's speech was that in which he quietly brushed the power and prestige of the Chancellor aside:

"Although you may read that Mr. Snowden is very much opposed to this policy, I am quite sure that the people behind him, who represent organized labor in Great Britain, in no way share his views."

Moreover in the MacDonald Cabinet itself, according to Lord Melchett, "Mr. Snowden stands alone"* in opposition to a tariff policy.

Because he likes to speak in paradoxes, smiling Lord Melchett next informed the Bond Club that Britain, in preparing to erect a tariff wall around her Empire, is really seeking the benefits of free trade. "We are beginning to think along the lines of economic units the size of the United States," said he. "Your vast continent, stretching from the Atlantic to San Francisco, presents the greatest free trade area in the world. ... It owes its great prosperity not to tariffs but to its great free trade area! . . . That is something which has been overlooked in America. . . ."

Finally this potent, prophetic Briton indulged in a bit of pure irony which made some of the Bond Clubbers squirm: "You have always protected your home market. The infant industries of America have remained in swaddling clothes ever since I can remember. You have put up a tariff wall which has enabled them to grow up to manhood and protects them today. In fact, the longer you go on, the higher it gets. Of course, you never have varied, and I don't think ever will vary it or should vary it now.

"I have no doubt you will be pleased at a British tariff because there is nothing so pleasing as to see your friends follow your thoughts."

*Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald let it be known fortnight ago that he tentatively favors an 8% tariff on all British imports (TIME, Sept. 15).

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